By Michelle Roberts
Austin American-Statesman
October 26, 2009
http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/local/2009/10/26/1026eldorado.html
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| Raymond Jessop is first man from ranch to stand trial. |
Defendant is charged with sexual assault of a child, allegedly his wife.
SAN ANGELO — The first jury trial in more than a decade in the West Texas town of Eldorado involves allegations of polygamy and sexual assault of an underage bride, a far cry from the drunken-driving cases that occasionally occupy the Schleicher County court system.
Today, attorneys will begin culling the largest jury pool that has ever been called in Eldorado. They are trying to find 14 people in the county of 2,800 who can set aside what they have heard about the polygamist sect that was raided by authorities last year because of allegations that marriages involved underage girls. More than 400 children were taken into state custody.
Raymond Jessop, 38, will become the first man from the Yearning for Zion Ranch to go on trial. He is charged with sexual assault of a child — an underage girl whom he married — and could face up to 20 years in prison if convicted. He is also charged with bigamy in connection with allegations that he married a second underage girl, but that case will be tried separately.
In all, 12 sect men have been charged with crimes, including failure to report child abuse, bigamy and sexual assault. All have denied wrongdoing.
Under Texas law, generally, no one younger than 17 can consent to sex with an adult.
The Eldorado cases began after a woman in Colorado called a Texas domestic abuse hot line in March 2008 and said she was a teenage girl with an older husband who raped and beat her. State authorities intervened at the ranch, taking away 439 children and hundreds of boxes of documents and family photos. The Texas Rangers have acknowledged that the hot line information was false; the caller has not been charged.
The children were later returned to their mothers or other relatives, and none remains under the oversight of state officials.
Seating a 12-person jury and two alternates for Jessop's case may be difficult because most residents of the tiny ranching community know one another and because the April 2008 raid received national and international media coverage.
"Perhaps I should ask if anyone has not heard," state District Judge Barbara Walther said at a pretrial hearing. "It's extremely unlikely that we'll have anyone who will say they have not heard about this trial."
The Yearning for Zion Ranch became the talk of the town after members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints bought a patch of West Texas scrub about six years ago and turned it into a compound that included gardens and a towering limestone temple.
Speculation grew about life in the secluded community when the sect's leader, Warren Jeffs, was placed on the FBI's most-wanted list. He was accused in Arizona and Utah of arranging underage marriages with sect girls. Jeffs, who is revered as a prophet within the sect, was captured in 2006 and convicted in Utah as an accomplice to rape. He is in jail in Arizona awaiting trial on charges related to underage marriages there and faces sexual assault and bigamy charges in Texas.
During the raid, some local residents gave food, supplies or other support to authorities while they were encamped in Schleicher County; others helped the women and children who moved away from the ranch while the authorities were there. Jessop's attorney, Mark Stevens, said it was likely that potential jurors would be asked about any involvement in the raid.
The county sent summonses to 300 potential jurors. If lawyers cannot get a full panel, the trial could be moved to an adjoining county. Tom Green County, home to the much larger city of San Angelo, is a likely choice.
The last jury to be impaneled in Eldorado, in the late 1990s, decided the punishment of a drug possession defendant who pleaded guilty but wanted a jury to decide the penalty. Randy Mankin, editor of The Eldorado Success, the town's weekly newspaper, remembers because he was on that jury.
He has received a summons for Jessop's trial, as has his college-age son and his mother.
Stevens and Assistant Attorney General Eric Nichols have agreed to consult with Walther throughout jury selection and testimony on a host of contentious issues — including the false report that triggered the raid, the allegation that Jessop has multiple marriages and an appellate court decision that criticized the state for moving all the ranch children into foster care.
Nichols said the trial is expected to last two weeks. The prosecution lists 59 potential witnesses, including law enforcement and child welfare officials, two women supposedly married to Jessop and former sect members.
Authorities have said little about the allegations against Jessop, but documents taken from the ranch indicate that the assault charge stems from a relationship with an underage girl. She later became pregnant and was in labor for several days in August 2005. However, she was not taken to the hospital, allegedly out of fear that hospital authorities would discover her age.
"I knew that the girl being 16 years old, if she went to the hospital, they could put Raymond Jessop in jeopardy of prosecution as the government is looking for any reason to come against us there," said Jeffs in a document confiscated by authorities.
Jessop is also accused of marrying one of Jeffs' daughters the day after she turned 15, and the bigamy charge is related to that relationship.
Members of the sect, which believes polygamy brings glorification in heaven, have historically lived around the Arizona-Utah line. Since the raid on its Texas land, hundreds of sect members have returned to the log cabin-style homes near Eldorado.
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